Lolita (1997)

Jeremy Irons takes a break from bombing New York to adopt and incestuously molest a young schoolgirl, who he obnoxiously refers to as a 'nymphette' in the voiceover. Just as his wife-of-several-days is about to report him to the police for gross pedophilia, she abruptly runs outside and is fatally wounded by a car. This happens literally mid-conversation, while he's pouring a couple of whiskeys, because this film doesn't know what it wants to be.

Irons picks up his daughter/obsession from summer camp and they go on an absurdly long and convoluted road trip across the entirety of the US, paying for it with unknown funds. A mystery creep is somehow at all of their stops. Irons is disgustingly in love, and Lolita aggressively flirts and sleeps with him in exchange for attention. They repeat this a bunch of times, to make sure you fully understood the trivial plot so far.

Eventually they settle down in a small town and Irons actually gets a job. But his beloved daughter/prisoner stops doting on him. She gives him less and demands more, turning to more financial rewards. When she begins sneaking away from home, Irons goes paranoid delusional and follows her around, and then yanks her back on another road trip.

He believes they're being followed everywhere they go. We're maybe supposed to question his sanity and wonder if he's just delusional, but it's filmed so simply with a car following half a car length behind them at all times that clearly they are being followed. Eventually he stops for gas, spots Lolita chatting with a stranger, and a few minutes later she has vanished forever.

It briefly drops into a bad take on the film Taken, with Irons following "clues" and a "warm trail" across the entirety of the US again, none of which is explained in detail or makes any logical sense. Eventually the "trail goes cold," and then he finds her anyway. She's living in a trailer park with some bum, but explains that she ran away with the other pedophile who had been following them in a car for months and months and months. As… you do? Did people just not have jobs in the 1950s?

Irons drives to L.A. and walks into the other pedo's completely unlocked mansion and they do a full blown comedy routine; Irons is blasting away at him with a pistol while he runs around in a bathrobe spraying blood and playing the piano. On the one hand, these are the best scenes in the film. On the other hand, that's because they don't seem like they're from this film at all. Did they switch directors for the last twenty minutes?

I can't explain any of the filmmaking decisions. A lot happens, but very little of it meaningfully propels the story, so it feels like it's dragging the whole way through. It's supposed to be serious and introspective, I think, but sometimes falls into being inexplicably playful or goofy. Not the characters, but the film itself.

Mostly, it feels like a few pages of proper – though mediocre at best – screenplay padded out to two hours worth predominantly through repetition. And because that's not enough, it also features an obnoxious and unnecessary voiceover the whole way through.